UK and Ireland grew in 2025; much of Europe did not

Sourcing City’s own Market Report, written up on 11 August 2026, puts the UK and Ireland promotional merchandise market at £1,334 million for 2025, up 8.3 per cent from £1,232 million in 2024. That is the highest figure in the nineteen years they have compiled the research. They also say a meaningful share of the rise is price inflation — products, freight, operating costs — rather than extra business won. In real terms the year was steadier than the headline.

Jason Grenham, Sales Director at Sourcing City, put the same caveat in one line: “If you take out increased prices, the UK market still probably showed small growth.”

ASI Research’s fourth European study, as Sourcing City reports it, estimates that European distributors turned over 14.83 billion dollars in 2025, a low single-digit rise. ASI flags that much of that rise came from upward revisions to the Netherlands and Poland, not from new business. Strip those revisions out, Sourcing City writes, and the European market would most likely have contracted.

Germany, still Europe’s largest market on ASI’s figures, fell for a third consecutive year to 2.97 billion dollars, leaving it about 3.4 per cent below its 2022 level. France contracted by roughly 1.5 per cent. The EU as a whole managed 1.8 per cent. The stronger names on that page are the Scandinavian markets, Poland, and the UK.

Those two studies do not measure the same thing. ASI’s UK estimate is 2.26 billion dollars, about £1,713 million at the 2025 average rate Sourcing City used (1.319). Sourcing City’s £1,334 million excludes printers, clothing specialists, direct supplier sales, sales-promotion agencies in premiums, and the incentives and motivation market — exclusions they have held since 2007. Broader definitions produce bigger numbers. They are not interchangeable. The direction of travel is what they share.

What a merchandiser should do with that split is not reprint the table. It is change the brief.

Do not take a UK growth story into a German pitch and call it Europe. If the client’s volume sits in Germany or France, last year was a cut year. Exact quantities, later orders, and the same budget split across more, smaller purchases are what ASI’s interviewees described across Europe. Quote later. Hold less guesswork stock. Staff the late order, not the old seasonal peak.

If the client is UK and Ireland, you still do not get to sell a victory lap. Grenham’s “probably small growth” after prices is the honest line. Use it. Then show what the last programme did, not how long the catalogue is. Sourcing City and ASI both land there: evidence beats range. Discretionary spend is what gets cut first. Promo has to look like necessary marketing, or it will be treated as a nice-to-have on both sides of the Channel.

Watch the EU pipeline separately from the revenue story. Sourcing City’s own takeaway is that Digital Product Passport rules will reach anyone trading textiles into the EU before they feel urgent. A UK-only shop that still ships hoodies to Frankfurt is already on the clock.

The useful sentence for this quarter is short. The UK and Ireland grew, with inflation in the number. Much of Europe did not. Brief the country you are actually selling.